


Known and Unaccounted

by Rednaelo



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Spark Sexual Interfacing, Therapeutic Crying, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 12:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7508872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rednaelo/pseuds/Rednaelo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Left leg over right, right leg under left, chestplates close together: this was how mechs sat when they were going to sparkbond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Known and Unaccounted

**Author's Note:**

> Another commission, this one for a lovely anonfriend on the internet. Thank you so much, friend, for your patience. I know it was a bit of a wait but I hope it was worthwhile. This is still fluffy, but not without a bit of owie, because I think it's good for them to be real with each other. I hope you enjoy what I have for you! I really liked writing about these two again; I haven't in a while. So anytime you'd like to see more of them from me, I'd be more than happy to oblige.
> 
> Thanks again!
> 
> -Bec

Rodimus had seen images of this.  And they weren’t captures recorded on datapads or vidfeeds. This was something that he’d seen carved into ancient glyphs – in tablets of manganese and tattering slips of paper-thin foils that were kept behind shock-and-shatter-proof glass displays in museums – things that had long since been lost to wartime and its consequences.  But he’d fascinated over it enough as a youngling to remember

Left leg over right, right leg under left, chestplates close together: this was how mechs sat when they were going to sparkbond.  And he was doing it himself, one hand squeezing tight to Drift’s as they edged closer, adjusting themselves to get comfortable.

“There’s no way you don’t know,” Rodimus said, vocalizer cracking a bit with static as he tried speaking louder but trepidation turned the volume to a whisper.

“I know,” Drift assured him.  “This is different.”

“If you say so,” Rodimus said though he couldn’t quite help the rather sustained warmth that razed through him when his Autobot badge kissed up against Drift’s.  He shivered hard enough to shake Drift’s chassis.  “Hoo, boy….”

“Don’t think such big thoughts right now,” Drift said, and unspooled his main connector from the notch in his chestplate, holding the line out for Rodimus to take.

“Isn’t this big?” Rodimus asked.  He used his one free hand – the other laced so tightly with Drift’s – to accept the cable and plug it into the port on his side. 

_Auxiliary Spark readings detected.  Access Requested.  Approve/Deny_

Drift was smiling as he drew the hand he clutched towards his face.  Bright gold fingers were untangling just to slide against Drift’s cheek, every articulation met with warmth.  Rodimus fumbled for his own mainline.

“I’m glad you think it is,” Drift whispered against his palm.  He caught Rodimus’ extended line before Rodimus could develop an embarrassing tremble and plugged in. 

“We go on three?” Rodimus asked.  His other hand had naturally taken its place on Drift’s other cheek and before Drift could even get an answer out, Rodimus was kissing him.  Hungry lips and tongue tasted and sipped along Drift’s smile, savoring the breathless laughter that spilled out after just a bit of coaxing.  There was no countdown: Drift put his hands on Rodimus’ hips, kissed back, and they both threw the gates open.

Within, there wasn’t a concept of three-dimension or a method to travel in it.  But Rodimus felt Drift grab ahold of him and then tug him along to the right place.  Memories could not be relived.  That much data was impossible to keep and still function properly but there were some things that never really left.  Outside themselves, the kisses faded, and physical sensations turned to a chime, a hum, in the background of Drift’s proffered memories.  He gave Rodimus drug addiction, first, the feeling of the seventeenth circuit booster that Drift had taken in his lifetime and how that came with the last distinct preamble of, ‘This will make me feel better.’  Because the high was so good.  Dizzying.  Electric and strange and there was literally nothing but nothing was all of a sudden so much and so peaceful. Rodimus wrapped his whole mouth around it and swallowed it and let it eat him, like Drift had.  The crash shredded him.  He carried it around the alleyways and slogged with it through the gutters and bit his teeth around it while he let himself get fucked for a few more creds and the possibility of one more hit.  And he let it leave another grain of worthlessness in his spark chamber, gathering with the others into a film of dust.

Rodimus didn’t see the transition.  Drift didn’t offer it to him, but Rodimus was rather preoccupied with what he had already been given to really grasp what he had missed.  He could only recognize in Drift that something had been skipped over.

“Another day,” Drift promised him.  For another time.  Right now wasn’t about that moment.

Drift offered him anger.  Real anger.  Continuous, self-justified, destructive wrath.  It was as if the remnants of that dust inside had turned over on itself so many years and come out as a stone.  Drift squeezed his whole self around that stone and Rodimus let it settle and calcinate in his spark.  It was comfortable and familiar and Rodimus felt around the edges of that anger and laid out his own, small stones for Drift to turn over if he would.  Pithy in comparison, Rodimus could admit, but he wasn’t so keen on winning this particular contest. 

“How…?” he tried to ask, but the heat of it was like blood in his mouth and blood in his hands and blood splashed across his face.  Boiling and sickly and full of rust.  How could he hold this?  How could he even hold its memory? 

Rodimus’ hands were laced up against, twined between black fingers that somehow wound themselves even into the Spark of himself.

“It’s important,” Drift answered.  And the scroll of the memories fluttered by them both in pages, one by one, of every second spent with violence.  It felt so horrifically perfect to wreak.  What need was there for control?

It always goes back to this, Rodimus realized, as he held closely to the idea that it was so much more comfortable to not be in control.  Time and time again, the experiences that Drift showed him brought him to this conclusion.  He couldn’t help but remember the list of names, the tally of friends dead, the disappointments from those whom he had looked up to.

And there he was, tugged along Drift’s memories, and seeing – knowing – how surrendering control wasn’t any way to make things easier.

In truth, it was the only addiction that continued to linger, and Drift admitted to it after another skip, to when Rodimus had vouched for him.  They shared that memory, each holding up their image of it against the other and trading sensations, comparing the colors of the words remembered and what they evoked.

Rodimus admittedly expected that he would find peace thereafter.  But he didn’t.  Drift showed him none.  By rights, there was none to show, and even when Rodimus listed this way and that, seeking places in Drift’s recent memories where he might’ve found it, he only caught wisps and the consistent but fleeting spaces when Drift was alone and faced with the very memories he had just exhibited.  Those festering wounds that had scarred over in welds that would never truly be seamless again.

“I don’t get it,” Rodimus gasped, his lips warm and wet with the tears that had fallen onto them. 

“No,” Drift said.  Rodimus opened his eyes.  “You do.”

Drift was crying too.  He had been crying for a while, but the internal had overshadowed the external.  Rodimus hadn’t even realized it.  Who was first, then?  Who started it?  Hardlined as they were, there was no way that one could’ve started crying without the other following close behind, not as deep as they were.  There was no helping it. 

Rodimus brought up their hands – still gripped together – and covered his eyes with them, ashamed, and confused.

“No, I don’t,” he insisted.  “I don’t fucking get it.  Things are better now; I can see it, I know it for myself!  Why doesn’t it feel better?”

Rodimus sobbed.  Words kept trying to come out and they sounded like nothing but heart-torn wailing.  Tears wet the backs of his hands and slid down the plates of Drift’s arms and Rodimus kept focusing on Drift’s forehelm against his own and how the hardline kept turning over despair-loneliness-lost-lost-I’m-so-lost. 

“Drift, what do I do to fix this?”  Rodimus peeled his fingers from between Drift’s and wrapped his arms around Drift’s middle instead, pulling him as close as conceivably possible.  “Please, please, tell me how to make it better.”

“This helps a little,” Drift said, breathing gently against the cables of Rodimus’ neck.  It wasn’t the silence that was heavy, but everything it blanketed.  The quiet was soft, soothing over Rodimus – and Drift, he was there, Rodimus could feel him, and feel himself near to Drift – and all of the ugly revelations that had been laid out like bones to dismantle and label and fit together again.  Rodimus pressed his hands between the articulations of Drift’s shoulder plates and let the quiet into them.  Or maybe Drift did.  It didn’t matter – he felt it and it was a cooling balm to the fresh rip of this opened sore.  “You won’t ever be able to make it better, Rodimus.  No one can.”

“I hate that,” Rodimus cried.  “I hate this.”  And, luckily, he didn’t have to explain what about it he hated because Drift could read it for himself.  Somehow, he was laughing about it, answering with a wordless acknowledgement that yeah, Drift hated it too.  “But, goddammit, I’m not going anywhere,” Rodimus insisted, even more tearfully than before.  “If this is what helps then I’m going to be here.  And I’m never leaving you.  I’ll never make you leave me again either.”

“When I go,” Drift cautioned him, gently, a thumb stroking slow over the curve of his waist, “you have to let me.”

“I’ll hate it but I will,” Rodimus promised him.  He squeezed tighter, almost combatting his words, but then he withdrew and showed Drift his face, ugly and soaked with streaks of coolant.  “There’s so much left,” Rodimus said, merely giving voice to the words that he felt coming from Drift.  “You can still build over what’s already there.  And I want you to.”

“Help me when I ask for it,” Drift said, nodding to agree with Rodimus.

“Always.”

“And I’ll be here until then.”

“I don’t want to be without you anymore,” Rodimus whispered, smearing away the tracks from his face.  He could’ve just let it be silent – sent the intent across the places where they were tapped in.  But he owed Drift more than cowardice at this point.  So much more.

Drift was smiling at him.  Rodimus smiled back, heartbroken and so happy.

“You’re so beautiful,” Rodimus said.  His hands reached and he drew close again.  “I’ll bond to you now if you’ll have me.  You did this on purpose; you knew I would want to.”  And, of course, Rodimus knew that absolutely wasn’t the case but there was something to be said about the formality of their pose, the implications behind it.  They kept their chestplates closed and their lips sealed around one another but Rodimus’ spark pulsed and reached hard for Drift’s and he ached with joy over the wholehearted return.

In the dark of the habsuite, there was nothing but the steady throb of their biolights, pleasures trading over the hardline as they passed sparkpulses between one another.  Rodimus panted against Drift’s parted lips, stealing tastes of his tears as he went.  Somehow there had never been any hunger that could’ve matched how desperate he was for mech in his arms.  And Rodimus pushed his greediness for Drift right on through to him, aching for him like a cure to all of the anguish that he’d just vicariously took on.  Drift wrapped all around him, inside and out, and Rodimus did the same, knowing that just that little effort was holding together the dirty splinters that Drift considered himself to be.

“So beautiful,” Rodimus repeated in a gasp, another kiss caught between them.

“Rodimus,” Drift sighed back, his spark swelling behind his chestplates, so much that the pale glow of it was peering through the tiniest gaps in his armor.

“Please, Drift, please, please,” Rodimus begged, legs hitching tight around Drift’s hips, their armor clanging together in a desperate attempt to be nearer.  The paint transfers would be obvious in the light….  Rodimus silenced his own pleading by occupying his mouth with Drift’s, moaning the need straight into him as the yearning crested.  They shuddered hard in each other’s arms, a teardrop or two slipping from Rodimus’ chin to splash against their chests.  And when the shocks had stilled and their fans started gentling again, Rodimus spent slow minutes marking Drift’s reachable outline with kisses.  It took him hours and three more overloads between them for Rodimus to be satisfied.  But when Drift was dazedly, absently humming against Rodimus' lips, kissing him like he didn't have the processor to do anything else, Rodimus felt he might've helped make things better, if only a little.


End file.
